Mwahahaha! is immense fun you take on the role of one of the mad genius/scientist etc who wants to take over the world. You get to pick one doomsday machine from a set of three. Each device requires different resources to power and your character is allowed to convert various resource cards into resources in differing amounts and one resource they are not able to convert but can sacrifice cards at creation phase to get resources of this type.
During creation you can trade with other players, spend cards to get resources up to your limit or buy empire cards (which may allow you to convert more of your resource card value into resources) and Minion Cards (which help you to steal empire cards or resources from other players). One nasty twist is there are a number of betrayal cards in the resource deck, when trading with players you can claim this as any resource you like. Once you get someone to trade you get the resource you want and they get nothing!
During the rivalry phase you get to use your minions to steal resources or empire cards. They have a number associated with the resource and this determines how many dice you roll. If you are stealing resources from another players machine they get 2 dice for resources on the doomsday device plus any extras from their minions they can use in defense. It's then a matter of a straight roll off counting successes, any missing dice are treated as 2's. This rolling mechanic is used throughout the game and is very simple and elegant.
Next comes the Domination phase where everyone gets to threaten a City, State, Country or the World. Each step requires much more resources to fire up and requires more successes to gain the spoils of victory. On a successful threat you will be given a number of resources depending on the machine and the level you used it at. You can use each level twice for free then each subsequent use will incur humiliation penalties. If you fail you can either slink away incurring the humiliation penalty or you can blow up the City, State or Country gaining a +1die bonus but losing your doomsday device. You can discard your doomsday device and select another one from a set of three at this point as well.
The game is won when someone builds enough resources to power the doomsday device to World Domination level and succeeds in the threat.
This was really fun, but does play a lot longer than it says on the tin.
The pieces are very colourful and the artwork suits the theme very well.
